Your guardians were all drinking
that night as I lowered your guard
and we danced naked in moonglow.
your skin pale against the sin - black slopes
of that sacreligious stairwell.
The damned were close that night,
their dead hands reaching for your living flesh
 but no cold touch blistered our skin
or marked us with madness of conformity.
Yet even as I wrapped my life around you,
you turned to them, to safety .

Though I tried to guide you away
bathe you in protective warmth
as you walked between two worlds,
unable to come with me, not wishing to return
to the place where the dead waited
with arms spread wide, darkness called you,
light beckoned on the road I had to take. 
In between, in the grey zone
as your dark lover waited, cold, indifferent,
I lost you to the joyless seducer;

You let me lay you down and salve your fears
but dared not look at the light that was my destination.
Perhaps life burned too bright for an hour 
as our desires locked in defiance of convention,
The cold shades shrank back to their waiting world,
afraid to claim you as their own,
knowing others would bring you to their sacrificial altar.
Perhaps ... 
Or maybe to let you find love in that hour
and then steal from you the freedom
each minute promised was their cruel joke.

They knew I led you there not to offer my soul
but to steal yours. You blinked;
and passion disowned you,
We went in opposite directions,
me to walk between Angels and Demons,
you to rest in the grey places.
Now neither light nor darkness
colours the face of your cadaverous love,
as every unchanging day he peels
the life from your abandoned bones.

(for Shirley)